TRAI issues regulation on Reference Interconnection Offer

NEW DELHI: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Friday issued a regulation on reference interconnection offer.

The regulations envisage that the dominant operators, who have more than 30% market share within a telecom circle, will be required to formulate and publish RIO within 90 days.

The RIO will form the basis of interconnection agreements between two operators. Two telecom operators share the revenue when a call transmits from one network to another.

The two operators share revenue on the basis of interconnection agreements. In a multi operators scenario like that prevailing in India, interconnection agreements have become important.

In fact, major disputes of new private operators with the incumbents BSNL and MTNL are regarding the interconnection agreements.

As per RIO, revenue will be shared between the originator of a call, carrier and terminator. Currently, the terminator of a call does not get any revenue.

The operator publishing RIO will have to publish the costs for interconnection usage. This will form the basis of negotiation between the two operators.

However, the telecom industry is disappointed with RIO. "We were expecting that Trai would come out with a specific revenue sharing formula," said an industry representative. But, RIO is open-ended and leaves scope for disputes between operators.

According to Trai's guidelines, service providers would not be required to obtain prior permission for entering into interconnect agreements, but after an agreement has been signed, it would have to be registered with the Trai in accordance with the Trai regulations.

Interconnection agreements are required to be entered into by all service providers based on the RIOs so published.

"However, by mutual agreement the two parties concerned ie the interconnection provider and the seeker may modify and/or add to the terms and conditions stipulated in the published RIO," according to Trai.

Trai said that the interconnection seeker may either accept the condition offered in the RIO in full and enter into an interconnection agreement with the interconnection provider on that basis, or accept the offer pending execution of an individualised agreement after negotiations.